


Technically Family

by nagi_schwarz



Series: The Oppenheimer Effect [5]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 04:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6690043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: <i>Stargate Atlantis, John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Rodney's always been treated as disposable by people he's dated, and John Sheppard is damn well determined to make him see different.</i></p><p>Rodney meets John's kids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Technically Family

As it turned out, John and his housemates were not jobless reprobates who spent all day playing video games, painting, and staging photo shoots with strangers’ cats. They were all teachers at a local alternative high school, and while Rodney had been at the science conference with Bill and Sam, they’d been on spring break. John taught math, predictably. Evan taught art and physics (apparently he’d gotten his masters in geophysics so he could make major). Cam taught shop (he had his masters in mechanical engineering). JD was technically a teacher’s aide, which meant in the shop he acted as Cam’s legs, but he also played chess with the kids and gave them the occasional crash course in astronomy (which meant that one night a month, Casa Atlantica was flooded with rowdy teenagers for some midnight stargazing). Rodney wondered how all of them had decided on teaching, given that they’d all retired from the Air Force at different times and hadn’t really known each other before meeting up in the same grad program. Since Evan’s mother was an art teacher, that he fell back on teaching made sense. Cam came from a huge family and loved kids, so that he’d want to work with kids made sense. John admitted to having two nieces but generally being estranged from his brother’s and his family, so why he wanted to work with kids made little sense to Rodney, but he seemed to enjoy it. As for JD, he was still physically a kid himself, but he had a certain long-suffering for teenagers that the teenagers seemed to interpret as amusement, and that was that.

Rodney knew a lot of parents were still pretty weird about their kids having gay teachers (although by most accounts, the majority of the students’ parents didn’t care much about anything besides themselves and their drug habits), so he had never gone to meet John for lunch or take him lunch or otherwise make any romantic overtures while John was on the job. (Cam once helped John arrange for flowers to be delivered to Rodney under the mountain.) When he received a call at his office phone, under the mountain, from the school, he was surprised.

“Dr. McKay?”

“Speaking,” he said.

“Oh, um, Meredith?”

“Rodney. I go by my middle name, Rodney.” He was trying to figure out what the lifeless Ancient device was that Vala had brought back from some frolic through the gate that had involved too many alien Mexican stand-offs, disguises, and gunfights for comfort.

“Rodney. Right. You know John Sheppard?”

“Is that a question or a statement?”

“Sorry, this is Marie Cho, the nurse at Memorial High School. John Sheppard collapsed and was taken to Memorial North Hospital in an ambulance -”

Rodney was on his feet with his car keys in hand. “Tell me where he is.”

“He’s getting some tests done right now. He’s stable. I just thought you should know.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Okay. Bye.”

Rodney hung up the phone, fired off an email to Sam - _family emergency, cutting out early_ \- ran for the door, backtracked for his his laptop bag, and then really ran for the door. The elevator took forever, and then it seemed like every airman and his dog was leaving the mountain at the same time, so there was a huge line at the security checkpoint. He was halfway down the mountain when his cell phone rang. He fumbled for his Bluetooth earpiece.

“Hello?”

“Rodney, is everything all right?” It was Sam.

“I got a call from the school. John collapsed and they took him to the hospital. I’m going to meet him now.”

“Oh no! What happened?”

“I have no clue. The nurse just said he collapsed. Apparently he’s stable and having some tests done.”

“There should be a note in his file to alert his treating doctors at Walter Reed. I’ll go call and make sure.”

“You think this has something to do with - with the chopper crash?”

“There’s a reason he can’t fly anymore, Rodney. Let me make the call. Text me when you know he’s all right, all right?”

“All right.” Rodney hung up and wished the airman in the car in front of him would stop dawdling.

Cam, Evan, and JD were in the ER waiting room when Rodney arrived.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” Evan said, rising up from one of the cheap plastic waiting chairs. “I told the girl at the office to call you, but I wasn’t sure if she would.”

“What happened?” Rodney asked.

Cam smoothed a hand over his knee absently. “I’m not a hundred percent sure what injuries he suffered when his chopper went down, or when the locals had hold of him. Sometimes when the weather takes a nasty turn, the pressure change gives him a migraine something fierce. This one must have been pretty bad. To hear some of the students tell it, he hit the deck, screaming.”

“When can we see him?” Rodney asked.

“They won’t tell us anything,” JD said. His expression was carefully blank, but his tone was bleak. “We’re not technically his family.”

“I’ll go see what they tell me.” Rodney headed for the reception desk. When the nurse asked who he wanted to see, he said _John Sheppard_ and she said _How are you related?_ and he said _Marie from Memorial High called me and told me to come_ and she smiled and said _Oh, hey, I know Marie!_ and she led him to the back to wait beside an empty cot. Rodney waited till she was gone before digging out his cellphone - which he’d set to silent - and firing off a text message to Evan. They traded messages back and forth, and after what seemed like an eternity (but was only thirteen minutes, according to the clock on Rodney’s phone) John returned, wearing a hospital gown, slippers, and leaning on an IV pole.

“Rodney,” he said. He was pale and looked exhausted and agonized, his voice hoarse and cracked.

Rodney rose up, stepped toward him, and John collapsed against him with a shuddering breath.

“I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Evan and the others are in the waiting room.” Rodney wrapped his arms around John and just held him.

The woman in the white lab coat - Dr. J. Keller - waited a moment, for which Rodney was grateful, but then she said, 

“Major Sheppard, please, lie down.”

“I’m retired,” he said, but he allowed Rodney to steady him as he climbed onto the cot, then collapsed back against the pillows.

“I’ve sent the test results to Dr. Watson at Walter Reed,” Dr. Keller said. She was pretty, with dark blonde hair, a pleasant face. “Until I hear back from him, I want to keep you overnight for observation, see if the medication will make the swelling go down.”

“Swelling?” Rodney asked.

“In my brain. It’s what happens when a guy takes a header at compact desert sand with a chopper on top of him.” John tried to smile, but it turned into a wince.

Rodney’s eyes went wide, but Dr. Keller said, “It’s not a lethal condition, and it can be controlled by medication. Major Sheppard just needs to keep an eye on the weather forecast and take the appropriate dosage.”

“You know, _meteorologist_ is Latin for _liar_ ,” John said.

“Also, keep an emergency dose of the medicine at hand,” Dr. Keller said.

“I was distracted by the unholy schadenfreude I get when I inflict pop quizzes on my students.” John’s smile succeeded this time.

Dr. Keller couldn’t help but smile. “Of course. Just wait here for a few minutes while the nurses arrange for overnight accommodations, all right?”

John nodded.

“I came as soon as the school called,” Rodney began.

John grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him down for a kiss. It wasn’t much more than a firm press of lips on lips, but Rodney could sense the urgency behind it, so he didn’t protest. Then he remembered Evan and the others, so he fired off a text message conveying John’s status and, at Cam’s insistence, a picture of John for _proof of life_. John was obviously still in a lot of pain and didn’t say much, just hung on to Rodney’s hand and stared at nothing.

Some orderlies came to help John to his new room, and Rodney texted Evan the number of said room as he followed.

No matter how much the four of them begged and pleaded - and JD even broke out some very impressive puppy eyes, playing up his youthfulness - the nurses wouldn’t relent, and none of them could stay overnight.

Evan called John in sick the next day, and Rodney called in sick the next day (to Sam, who’d received his text messages about John with obvious relief).

Rodney spent all day with John, the two of them making fun of daytime talk shows and soap operas, doing Sudoku races (Rodney bought two identical puzzle books at the gift shop downstairs; John beat him thoroughly every time despite his unrelenting headache), and staging a photo shoot for Evan, Cam, and JD, who’d all had to go to work (and kept sneaking them text message requests for status updates). After a particularly vigorous Sudoku race, in which Rodney’s ego was left shattered on the floor, he took a break to stretch his legs and run down to the coffee cart outside of the hospital lobby, because the coffee in the vending machines and cafeteria was inhumanely bad. When he returned, the hospital room was full of teenagers wearing backpacks, carrying ‘Get Well’ balloons, cards, flowers, and even some stuffed teddy bears. Rodney paused in the doorway, not wanting to get overrun by teenagers in skinny jeans and short shorts and tights.

John, though, was asleep, and all of the kids were crowded around him eerily silent.

A boy right in front of Rodney said, “I heard the nurses talking. Shep is totally cheating on his woman.”

Rodney froze.

“How do you know?” a girl asked.

“No way,” another boy said. “Shep would never do that.”

“I heard the nurses say that Shep’s boyfriend has been taking care of him all day. Shep doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

“I didn’t think he had anybody,” the girl said.

“He does. A girlfriend. I heard the secretary say her name while I was in the office, when they were trying to figure out who to call about everything that went down yesterday.”

“But Shep lives with Cammie and Lorne and JD,” the other boy protested.

Rodney’s throat closed. No. Not again. He’d been through this before, been the metaphorical ‘other woman’ without realizing it, just a cheap fling while a man was bored with his wife, then thrown away as soon as his wife started putting out again. He couldn’t go through it again. He started to back away, his heart thudding oddly in his chest.

“Doesn’t mean he’s not dating anybody,” the first boy said.

“So what? He can date two people at once if they’re both cool with it,” the girl said.

“Yeah, but the girlfriend was listed as his next of kin. That’s a big deal. Means she’s family,” the first boy insisted. “For Shep to be stepping out on her with - with some dude is just uncool.”

“I don’t believe you,” the other boy said. “What’s her name?”

“Meredith,” the first boy said.

Rodney’s heart restarted. He sucked in a shaky breath, relief flooding his limbs, and the three kids in the doorway turned. The first boy’s eyes went wide with horror.

“Pardon me,” Rodney said.

“Mr. Sheppard’s asleep,” the girl said in a small voice.

“He was awake when I stepped out,” Rodney said. “Do you want me to try to wake him up, or do you just want to leave your gifts and I can tell him you stopped by?”

The three teens exchanged nervous looks.

And then Cam appeared, rolling casually along the hallway, Evan and JD trotting behind him.

“Hey, kids, you could have waited,” Evan said.

“I’m impressed with how fast they moved, though. We didn’t have to park the van far,” JD said.

“Funny,” Cam added. “They never move this fast when I assign them to something.” He pulled up short beside Rodney. “You been here all day?”

“Yeah, Sam let me take the day off. She’s pretty worried about him too.” He smiled tightly.

“Kids,” JD said, and some of them rolled their eyes, “this is Dr. Rodney McKay, Shep’s, uh...what are the kids calling it these days?”

“I think _boyfriend_ is fine,” John said.

Rodney started guiltily. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Like I could sleep with all this ruckus going on.” John smiled and levered himself up into a sitting position. “All you kids came to see horrible old me? After I saddled you with a nasty, terrible, no good pop quiz?”

The students swarmed around him, pressing him with their gifts and tokens of affection.

“Long day?” Evan asked quietly.

“Worth every minute. I just hate seeing him in pain,” Rodney said, just as quietly.

“Do you need to take a break? We can entertain him for a few hours,” Cam added.

“Although Evan is sneaky and brought homemade food, and you should share in the homemade food.” JD waggled his eyebrows meaningfully.

“I can stay,” Rodney said. He moved further into the room so the others could follow and watched as John fielded the kids’ questions and affection and concerns with deft charm. No wonder the kids loved him. He could make a stone cold murderer love him. The four men settled against the wall, watching the proceedings with interest.

“Hey Shep,” that first boy said, “who’s Meredith?”

JD snickered. Cam and Evan both dug elbows into his ribs at the same time. For the first time in his life, Rodney was glad his name was Meredith.

John blinked. “What? Who told you that name?”

The first boy cast his friends a smug look. But when he met John’s gaze, his expression was the picture of innocent curiosity. “I was in the office when you collapsed. The secretaries said to call your next of kin - Meredith.”

“Oh. Right. Well, Meredith is Rodney’s first name. It’s legitimately a boys’ name - means ‘lord of the sea’ - but you can understand why he’d want to go by Rodney.” John smiled at him, and Rodney couldn’t help it, he smiled back.

The boy looked at Rodney with wide eyes. “Oh. Are you two - married?”

“No, but we can be next of kin for each other,” John said. “One less thing for Lorne to worry about.”

The students laughed, and Evan ducked his head, blushing, because he had a reputation for worrying about everything.

“Hey kids,” John said, “you should ask Rodney about the time he built a nuclear warhead in sixth grade.”

All of the students turned to him with interested gleams in their eyes, and Rodney was alarmed.

“For the record, it was a non-working model.”

John smirked. “But you designed it yourself.”

“Of course I did! Per the science fair guidelines -”

And that was how Rodney found himself invited to JD’s next astronomy bash.


End file.
